Still Alive
by snarryvader81
Summary: Uroboros has detonated and everyone suffers the consequences. Sequel to 'Pet'. Dark.


Sheva wants to cry. She wants to breathe.

But she can't do either, so instead, she climbs. One hand at a time, feet following, the skin of her palms fusing with overheated leather as her fingers wrap around rope and somehow, somehow she makes it to the next rung.

Her eyes might as well be on fire for what they feel like, dry, searing pits in her face swollen with tears they can't shed. Her vision bursts black and red, long distorted shapes that leave her half-blind, fumbling to move as her ears ring and her stomach rolls, vomit sloshing up past her screaming lungs into the back of her mouth.

She wishes she could close her eyes and it would all go away. The heat and the sulfur and the pain, the swaying of the ladder, the whirring of the helicopter blades, the lunatics on the ground and the body in the plane, who she is, what she is, what's coming.

But all that really happens when she closes them is that instead of taking her away, it takes her _back_ , traps her in that instant and repeats it over and over again. They had been so close, so close that it makes her body _ache_ with the thought of what she _should've—could've—might've,_ but then Wesker had called out to his rabid dog.

It was funny now to think that for a second, Sheva hadn't thought he'd do it. _Funny_ in a way that makes her want to tear her hair and _hit hit hit something anything everything_ until she's bloody.

Because Claire had been—had been—

She'd been auburn hair and blue eyes and beautiful sadness, smiles that were all the better for their rareness. She'd been determination and quiet strength and hope and light and _good_ in every way that Wesker was vile. She'd loved, loved _him,_ in a way Sheva could barely fathom or understand, so intensely that no matter how far it stretched or how much it twisted, it could never fade. There has been so little love in Sheva's life that she doesn't think there would even be words to describe being loved like that, that the beauty of it would transcend language and thoughts and everything else.

And Redfield snuffed it all out for the sake of that _thing,_ without so much as a second thought, a hesitation, a tear _._ He's a whore on a chain at his master's command, and what hurts like a knife to the gut is that Sheva doesn't think Claire would've thought any less of him even now. She probably wouldn't want Sheva to either, would plead his case and play devil's advocate and make a thousand excuses but nothing can change the fact that Sheva _does_.

She _hates_ him, _**hates**_ him as much as she hates Wesker, hates him as much as she loves Claire, and she wishes that she'd killed him during the seven minutes of cat and mouse or in the hangar, whenever wherever however she could've. She would've died smiling if she just could've taken him with her.

But instead she's alive and climbing a ladder with the thud of Claire's body hitting the floor playing in a loop behind her scalding eyes as the world falls apart around her. Her lungs want air, throat begging to open— _just a little, anything_ —but she _can't_ because it's in the air, it's _everywhere_. It could already be _in_ her for all that she knows, because as much as she's tried not to breathe who ever said that that was the _only_ way it could be contracted? It could've already clung to the membranes of her nostrils and eyes or the top layer of her skin or a cut or a nick or a burn and started burrowing down down down towards blood and tissue and organs.

Uroboros was a rumor a month ago. A week ago, even. It's such a short time but it's like a crack has opened up, a massive divide between _then_ and _now_. Neither of them seem real, either, like there could ever possibly have been something else before this, or that this could be _happening_ even as it is.

Yet there's no way to escape it. It's below her, in the black writhing ropes covering the ground, in Wesker clutching Redfield like he's a doll as oily virus seeps into their skin. It's in front of her, as her fingers finally claw the metal floor of the helicopter and Josh hesitates to touch her to help her up, eyes scared behind a mask on his face.

He gives her one to strap on her head, but breathing, the rush of oxygen to her brain, does nothing but make it all _sharper_. She's here, caught in this moment in a world she doesn't want to be in, and she is powerless to do anything except remember Claire's voice and Redfield's gunshot and Wesker's laugh and Excella's screams as the Virus tore her apart. It's like a funeral dirge, playing only for her.

And all Sheva can do is close her eyes and listen and wait.

.

.

Author's Note: Heeeellllllooooo. So it's been years, but I have the attention span of a gnat. But hey, at least there is finally the semblance of a sequel.

Don't expect any real central plot to this. It's just going be kind of everyone's shitty angsty epilogue. Wesker and Chris will be in it, but there's going to be focus on a lot of the characters we didn't see in the other story, too. Expect lots of hanging out in an underground bunker, walking the post-apocalyptic earth, and Darkness Induced Audience Apathy. Oh, and ships. So many ships.

Oh, and the Sheva/Claire implications were definitely intentional.

The story is named after the song 'Still Alive' by Lisa Miskovsky and the chapter title is from 'Hallelujah' by Jeff Buckley.

-Annastasia


End file.
